What Is the Armor Protecting?
Using Athena's Armor as a Therapeutic Metaphor
I write for therapists who are curious about the unconscious life of their clients—and of themselves—but who have sometimes found psychoanalytic and Jungian writing unnecessarily difficult to enter. In this series, I translate depth-oriented ideas into clear, clinically grounded reflections that therapists can use without reducing the mystery or complexity of the human psyche.
Rather than offering archetypes as labels or interpretations, I invite therapists to use them as lenses: ways of becoming curious about the identities, defenses, longings, relationships, and cultural expectations shaping a client's life. I am especially interested in what happens within the therapist and how greater self-awareness allows us to respond with intention rather than react from our own unexamined material.
Women are entering workplaces historically shaped by male models while carrying familial and cultural expectations that they will be mothers, caregivers, partners, peacemakers, nurturers, helpers, and the people who hold everything together.
The tension, then, is far more complicated than the familiar question of career versus family.
The deeper question may be:
And perhaps an even more important question:
Archetypes as an inner resource…
Archetypes can give therapists and clients a symbolic language for exploring psychological patterns that might otherwise remain outside awareness. When introduced tentatively and collaboratively, they can illuminate strengths, defenses, vulnerabilities, and familiar responses to threat without reducing a woman to a diagnosis or fixed category.
Archetypes are best offered as possibilities rather than interpretations. The therapist does not tell a client that she “is” Athena. Instead, the therapist and client explore whether Athena's story or imagery gives meaningful language to some part of the client's experience.
The goal is not to place women into another set of categories or predefined boxes. It is to deepen self-awareness and help women discover they have access to a broader range of psychological resources than they may currently recognize.
Athena, for example, is associated with wisdom, strategy, discernment, crafts, and skill. She is also a warrior—and she wears protective armor. When we stop to consider it, her armor offers a particularly powerful metaphor for women.
A woman may enter therapy carrying the recurring belief that she is not “good enough.” When a situation activates that belief, she may withdraw, isolate herself, become defensive, or retreat into competence and self-sufficiency. Her armor protects her from the shame, vulnerability, or fear stirred by the experience.
Imagine that this woman has begun developing the capacity to observe what is happening within her. She notices the discomfort and recognizes the familiar thought:
This time, however, she does not immediately withdraw or react. She becomes curious. She begins to recognize that the present situation has awakened something older and deeper within her.
With that awareness, she can consciously draw upon the qualities Athena represents—discernment, strategic thinking, composure, and wisdom. She might pause before responding, notice the story unfolding in her internal dialogue, separate her emotional reaction from the content of the situation, and ask, “What does this moment ask of me now?”
Athena becomes a symbolic reminder of capacities the client already possesses and can learn to use more intentionally. She asks the armor to perform a different function.
Grounded in greater awareness of her internal resources, she can ask:
What belongs to me?
What does not?
How can I grow from this experience?
She may not immediately stop feeling inadequate, but by giving voice to this internal narrative, she is no longer entirely governed by that feeling state. She has begun to question an old narrative and create space for a more complex truth: I can experience uncertainty, receive difficult information, and still remain grounded in my worth.
From unconscious reaction to conscious choice…
Self-awareness does not mean eliminating our defenses, emotions, or instinctive reactions. Nor does it mean becoming so self-controlled that we cease to feel them. It means becoming increasingly conscious of what is happening within us so that we have greater choice about what happens next.
Athena's armor is neither inherently healthy nor unhealthy. The question is whether we are wearing it consciously.
The same psychological resource that helps one woman establish a courageous boundary may help another avoid vulnerability. The Wise Woman who carefully reflects before acting may sometimes use reflection to avoid acting at all. Our strengths and shadows are often closer to one another than we realize.
The more conscious we become of these internal patterns, the less likely we are to be unconsciously governed by them. Curiosity creates space between what we feel and what we do. We become less reactive and more intentional, moving from protection toward discernment and from automatically enacting familiar patterns toward consciously choosing our response.
Athena's armor offers therapists a way to speak about defenses without treating them as defects. The armor may have protected a woman's dignity, belonging, ambition, vulnerability, or very sense of self. Our task is not to decide that she should remove it. Our task is to help her become conscious of why she wears it, recognize what it has made possible, and discover whether she now has greater freedom to choose.
The question is not whether she wears the armor. The question is whether she knows what she is asking it to protect.
Invite the client to imagine the protective armor she has developed throughout her life. She may describe it, write about it, or draw it. Explain that the purpose is not to remove the armor, but to become curious about how it has served her. The image can evolve as her awareness deepens.
These questions do not need to be explored in one session or in a prescribed order and can be woven into the clinical dialogue or used as follow-up questions for reflection between sessions. The image of armor should be offered as an invitation, not imposed as an interpretation.
- What does your armor look or feel like? Is it competence, perfectionism, humor, silence, anger, independence, caretaking, achievement, or something else?
- When did you first learn that you needed it? What was happening around you? What did you need protection from?
- What has your armor made possible? How has it helped you survive, succeed, belong, maintain control, or care for others?
- What might your armor protect from being seen or felt? Are there feelings, needs, fears, or longings that it keeps hidden from others—or perhaps even from you?
- What does wearing it cost you now? Does it interfere with intimacy, receiving help, tolerating feedback, resting, or acknowledging your needs?
- When does your armor still serve you? In what situations is it protective, wise, or necessary?
- When might you be safe enough to loosen it? What conditions, relationships, or internal resources would make that possible?
- If you could choose consciously, what would you ask your armor to protect now?
As you explore a client's armor, notice what is stirred within you—the impulse to admire, rescue, challenge, reassure, withdraw, or prove that you can reach her.
Countertransference is not an occasional disruption; it is always present in the therapeutic relationship. When examined with curiosity, honesty, and humility, it becomes a powerful source of clinical understanding—and a continuing pathway for the therapist's personal and professional growth.
This article is a clinical companion to What Is Your Armor Protecting? Athena, Archetypes, and Women in Leadership →